


Neural Handshake

by bodysnatch3r



Series: Into the Drift [2]
Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Gen, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-29
Updated: 2013-08-29
Packaged: 2017-12-25 01:25:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/946980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bodysnatch3r/pseuds/bodysnatch3r
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fíli Durinson is everything a perfect Ranger recruit has to be: top of the class, 50 drops, 48 kills and brains that could get him into the best universities possible (if the world weren't ending and if he weren't more interested in kicking kaiju ass, that is)- now all he needs is a drift partner to pilot Archer Spitfire and he's ready to go. It all sounds too good to be true, until the only person he's drift compatible with is Kili: and Kili happens to be his rage-fuelled, estranged little brother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Neural Handshake

The first time he's training and he follows the R.A.B.I.T., Kili's yelling at him and he's snarling in his direction, dark hair falling over his eyes. Fili tears himself out of the memory not so quick and he dies with a crunch of bone and the horrifying taste of death, or maybe it's just the voice that leaves a metallic tinge at the back of his throat.

He wonders if it'll go away with dinner.

It doesn't.

* * *

_don't touch me you have no right_

_(calm down_

_please calm down?)_

_lay a finger on me and i'll scream you're all liars you're all nutjobs leave me alone leave me the fuck alone_

_(mum's sleeping please don't do this)_

_i don't care i don't care_

_(kili please don't do this)_

* * *

The second time he's training and he follows the R.A.B.I.T., Kili's slamming the door behind him and he's dragging a backback and a gym bag with him and somewhere his mother is curled up on a couch hoping that if the Thing will get ignored the Thing will stop existing, in this case it's her youngest son leaving forever, in another case it's the cancer eating away at her husband, her youngest little brother dying while the monster tore at the city around them. Fili wonders if it's worth it, to leave home whilst out there Hell is crawling out of the ocean every day, because the world is falling apart under their very feet but as Kili graciously shoves them out of his life a kaiju seems and feels like breadcrumbs, or wind, or if worse comes to worst the coffee overflowing the pot. 

A kaiju is _nothing_ compared to this, which is funny, because "nothing" is what he is right now to his younger brother, which makes no sense, which is nothing and everything.

Fili will eventually come to terms with it, but for now he is twenty-two and it feels wrong and he is the one to blame, he knows this. He _knows_ this. 

(And then he is twenty-four again and he's just been beaten to pulp by a kaiju. Tendo Choi tells him to focus, he feels mild irritation seethe through him that his psyche will later be sure to turn into insomnia).

* * *

He stares at the ceiling and wonders if punching himself in the face will make the empty go away. Somewhere someone else is cheering and he knows his uncle and Dwalin've just killed another one and he knows he should be out there to celebrate ( _a family of kaiju killers_ ), God bless Dragon Fury and her pilots, God bless the suspected not-so-secret affair those two are having, God bless it all. They call them the British Kaidonovskys and it's hilarious, really, a corny joke, here comes the punchline, _laugh_ , you miserable piece of shit.

He wishes the sarcasm and self-hate would stop galloping through his skull because tomorrow's yet again his big day and he desperately needs the rest he isn't being granted, and once again Fili finds himself thinking about a number of mistakes that aren't his fault and weren't even mistakes to begin with: the list is actually nothing but coincidences and things that sometimes happen and people dying at the wrong time and illnesses taking over, numbers and tests and scans and fatalities you were not born being able to control, so don't bother trying, it isn't the way things work.

The one thing he's wondering about, right now, is that the fact that they're relentlessly looking for someone he can drift with although he's already tried three times with three different people and it's never worked, _ever_ depends on the fact that he's a good Ranger and they don't want to lose him, or on the fact that his uncle is one of Dragon Fury's pilots, which means basically PPDC royalty: either way, he feels like a cripple. Heck, he  _is_ a cripple, the boy who couldn't drift although _he had to_ because there's a damn jaeger waiting for a pilot, and the more there are of them fighting off those damn kaijus, the better.

Fili is aware that a new recruit just came in but he hasn't seen them yet, he only knows that Thorin knows them and they're a quiet type and he's only seen the back of their head _once_ , dark muddy dreadlocks tied up in a messy bun. Rumor has it they're one of the candidates, which is the only logical reason as to way they've been awkwardly nosing around and keeping well out of his way.

But something about them makes him feel scared. He stares at the picture tacked to the wall, next to the sink. It's blurry from all the way over to the bed, but hell, he knows exactly when, where and by who it was taken. It's him and his mother and his brother, and-

_smile for the camera kili_

_i don't want to_

_come on, kiddo, smile for daddy_

The saltwater, he remembers, was cold against his ankles.

* * *

Morning comes much too soon for his taste: it feels wrong in his skin, nervousness making him jumpy and awkward and fidgety, a night spent badly is a training that will go even worse.

_Candidates_ , his brain snaps back at him, and Fili whines into his hand as he's rinsing his face. Chin up, pretty boy.  _You're gonna be a rockstar_.

We both will, he thinks,  _whoever we are_.

* * *

"Four to zero."

Fili sighs loudly and runs a hand through his sweat-matted hair. There's _three more to go_ , and he's still nowhere near the connection he's heard about so often, the connection he sees in Thorin and Dwalin with every perfectly coordinated movement and sentence ended by one another, endless scenes of two consciousnesses so perfectly intertwined sometimes you feel as if you're looking at something that isn't there for you, as if you're evesdropping on sex, on something intimate when all you're doing is sitting at lunch and they're bickering about anything under the sun and it's okay, because it's one of the luxuries you can allow yourself when you don't know if you'll be alive the next day.

He lets go of his opponent's neck and finally decides to give an actual, proper look at the remaining candidates. Which is exactly when his throat crushes itself shut, and he turns towards the Marshal who blankly stares back at him. Thorin, who's been granted the permission to witness, looks at his feet.

"No." Fili says, immediately, without thinking, automatically. "No. Out of the question."

The person in front of him swipes a dreadlock behind his ear and leans against his fighting staff. He sighs, loud, melodramatic, as if to say: "This was a bad idea to begin with, _I told you_ he was going to react this way." As if his agressiveness is his fault and his alone and not a response to someone else's, because Fili might be the oldest but not all of this is his fault, _please don't blame it always all on me_.

Kili, on the other hand, looks older and better fit, something entirely different from the seventeen year old who stormed out of the house two years earlier. A different glint in his eye. Fili wonders how the fuck did he miss the fact that his brother enrolled in the Academy, and either nobody told him, or nobody wanted him to know, or he knew and for some freakish neurological reason pretended not to.

" _Mister Durinson_." the Marshal admonishes. Everyone knows this might be Archer Spitfire's only chance to have pilots, so Fili turns to Thorin, desperate, "It's not going to work."

" _Fili_."

" _It's not going to work, he_ -"

Panic manages to shut his brain down before he spits too much out. The other candidates mumble and grumble, Kili clicks his tongue.

"I'm over _here_ , you know."

He hasn't seen him in two years, and last time he checked, Kili hated him and his mother and all of their family. So it's impossible that they'll drift: it makes no sense, it goes against everything that the Drift stands for, how on Earth can Fili trust Kili and viceversa?

"Do it, Fili." Thorin pleads, looking as uncomfortable as ever.

Fili tightens his grip on his stick and glances at his brother (it feels so strange and damn _unreal_ ) and wishes he'd never woken up that morning. Kili immediately assumes a fighting stance and Fili notices the tattoo clawing its way along his arms (raven feathers) and it's a meaningless detail but for some reason his chest feels like it's on the brink of caving in. He doesn't want to do this. Kili doesn't want to do this. But they have to, God knows why, and it's going to hurt and humiliate the both of them, but Fili thinks, as he lurches forward, teeth bared in a snarl, that it's better they stop whining and just get over with it.

It is both painful and exhilarating.

They _dance_. 

* * *

"THORIN!" 

Fili rushes up to his uncle and stops him in the middle of the corridor.

His uncle glares at him, jaw set.

"I can't do this."

Thorin arches an eyebrow, "You _saw_ what happened in there."

"Thorin, I can't do this, come on. Don't make me do this."

"You're perfectly compatible."

"I know. But." Fili's words die in his mouth, and he looks at his uncle, eyes pleading for mercy that he knows he will not get.

"Archer needs two pilots."

"I don't  _care_ about Archer."

"BUT I  _DO_. I care about this whole damn planet, Fili."

( _And the PPDC's budget, too_ , Fili thinks with a bout of angry cynism).

"Thorin, Thorin, I haven't talked to him in two years. And he's, he's what? Eighteen? Nineteen? Either way, he's young.  _Too young_."

Fili suspects they brought him in as a last resort. Something tells him it's what Kili thinks too.

" _I can't do this_."

"You'll have to."

_Be the older brother, be the most mature_ is mixed in with his uncle's words, lound and horrifyingly clear.

* * *

He's sitting alone. Typical.

The newbie sits alone at the furthest, most isolated table, stirring his soup and staring at the blotches of disgusting grease that float on the surface. Fili stares at the empty table with horror and pity and the gut knowledge that he's going to have to sit down there.

Across from his brother.

Who hates him.

Who's going to have to stand next to him and fight alien monsters.

Fili's tray hits the table with an uncomfortably loud clang.

"If you think I'm going to talk, I'm not."

The oldest brother freezes even before he's started sitting down and scowls at Kili, who doesn't look up from the soup, who looks like he doesn't care about what he's just said, who just  _sits_ there, and Fili is, for a moment, torn between storming out or being the responsible good little boy everyone expects him to be. He chooses the latter, and sits.

"I don't want to talk. Just remind you that out there I'm going to have to trust you one hundred percent."

"You can trust me. Hate and trust are two utterly different things."

His brother looks up and Fili's scared once again to witness how much older he's become, how deeper and more sunken his eyes look than he'd imagined. He feels powerless, for a second. 

For a breath.

"You could've... you could've  _called_." he catches himself murmuring. 

Two years is a long time to stay mad.

Kili shrugs. "I didn't want to."

"Mum's gotten better," he says, as if this'll erase and thaw the ice between them. And again, Kili shrugs. It's something he's always done.

"That's good to hear."

His apathy and lack of interest are enough to make Fili want to hit him square in the face with his tray full of food. Something tells him his brother can sense this, because his shoulders tighten almost immediately: actually, the moment the thought crosses Fili's brain. He blinks. Kili twists a ring on his finger and seems to want to bury himself in his uniform.

"Kili, listen. I don't. I don't know. Tomorrow you'll be running around my brain and we both know this is a bloody horrible decision but. We gotta do it."

"I know."

"Can't you just  _say_ something, for Chrissake?"

"What do you want me to say: I'm _sorry_? I'm sorry I left for two years? I'm sorry I couldn't handle mum after she'd. After she'd... bloody _disappeared_  in her room? I'm sorry I couldn't handle dad fucking  _dying_?" 

The outburst is sudden and violent and stops Fili in his tracks. He can't see him, but a few tables down Thorin's eyeing their interaction, Dwalin's hands massaging his neck. He swallows, nervous. They're treading on thin, thin ice and they need as many jaegers and pilots as they can to put out there, every team is precious. It's been six months since since the Anchorage disaster and the kaiju are just getting worse.

Fili digs his nails into his palms and realises Kili's jaw is violently shaking, eyes shining with tears he will not allow himself to spill. "I'm sorry I couldn't handle everything  _falling apart_?"

His voice is nothing but a very sad, very scared little whisper.

_You think I did_? is what Fili would love to ask, but he doesn't. Kili just stares at him, and when he blinks his eyelashes are wet and his throat is tight. 

* * *

He doesn't want to be here.

He's stuck between a rock and a hard place and he wants to be six feet underground, where it's warm and it's safe and his brother isn't standing next to him in full ranger gear grimacing when he feels himself get connected to the machine, and suddenly his breath is short. And Fili's is, too, because-

_Jesus_.

She is around them, within them, enclosing them. Giant, terrifying, a living, breathing metal monster that holds them within herself the same way a mother would hold a child. Kili's eyes are shining, Archer Spitfire breathes through his sudden amazed gasps.

"Boys?"

Tendo's voice reaches their ears and Fili braces himself for what's about to come.

"Initiating neural handshake in fifteen, fourteen..."

Thirteen.

Twelve.

Eleven.

Ten.

Nine.

Eight.

Seven.

Six.

Five.

Four.

Three.

Two.

"Here it goes." he hears Kili mutter.

_One._

_light and breath a darkness exploding they find themselves again, mother? mother. mother holding them and laughing and father laughing and both of them laughing together, the image tumbles and becomes fili's first girl, kili's first girl, giggles against skin screaming orgasms, the first day of school **remember to be good**_

And then.

_father's sick pancreatic cancer **we'll be fine, we're a family** but nothing is ever fine let the thoughts flow don't latch on don't latch on don't follow the R.A.B.I.T.  **you're all liars you're all nutjobs leave me alone smile for the camera leave me alone** please don't do this a funeral **this is never going to work this is never going to work** hate so much hate and resentment and regret weed and heroin and dreadlocks and blond hair green eyes perfect grades and kili smiling against a boy? a boy's skin truly smiling feeling freer than ever lighter than ever screaming against him nails raking down? a boy's back? kili's consciousness brushing against his brother's puzzlement  **why didn't you tell me** is a thought but nothing more **thorin's gay too** and then it comes from both of them at the exact perfect moment the quiet single explosion a thought that lacerates them into nothingness and into something whole again_

_**i'm sorry** _

_**it's okay** _

_**it's okay** _

_**(i know)** _

_**they are one** _

"Archer Spitfire?"

Tendo.

"You're perfectly aligned."


End file.
